Interview: Paul Leary and filmmaker Tom Stern on the Butthole Surfers documentary ‘The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt’
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Paul Leary is a musician and record producer best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist for the experimental rock band Butthole Surfers. Tom Stern is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer who directed the new documentary about the band called Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt. (Read our review.)
Cinema Sugar’s chief critic James Podrasky spoke with Paul and Tom ahead of the film’s premiere at Beyond Fest in Chicago about the origins of the documentary, its unique style, reuniting the band, and more!
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
1. What is the origin story of this documentary?
Tom: I’m a filmmaker. I have worked in comedy for most of my career, did a sort of cult feature called Freaked, which is still around. And then I saw the Butthole Surfers when I was in college at NYU film school and was blown away by them, became a huge fan and shot them at CBGB in 1986. Made a film around that and did some short films with them after that. This is sort of a full-circle project. They’ve been a huge influence on me, so I did this documentary to try to cement their place in music history. It was a labor of love that I’m really happy with.
Paul: Well, as Tom mentioned, a while back he did a movie called Freaked, and it got shelved for a number of years. Just as they were getting ready to burn all the copies of it, somebody snatched it aside and they did a screening of it at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. And Tom invited me to come to the theater and play live guitar along with the movie. And that was a whole lot of fun and got to see some of the actors that were in the movie and all that stuff. I’ve had a lot of people approach me about wanting to make a documentary about the Butthole Surfers and never met any of them that I thought could do an adequate job. And then Tom and I got to talking about it and Tom made perfect sense because he got us, and we worked with him and we’re friends. So that’s how the documentary came about.
2. What was the moment where you’re like, “This is the right time for a documentary”?
Paul: I never thought about “is it the right time?” other than, you know, before we die, which is probably not that far away. But everybody in the band was on board. Jeff Pinkus was a little skeptical at first, but that’s his nature and we respect him for that. But he ended up participating and we were very glad for that. It just felt right for all of us, and I’m really proud of the work that Tom did. I think the documentary he ended up making is a better story than the actual band story itself. The editing is fantastic and I thought it would be good, but I was kind of surprised. I thought it turned out really good.
Tom: It was a long journey, five years in the making. It was a huge challenge to try to get this amazing band’s story into a 90-minute or 100-minute film, and I really didn’t know how I was going to pull it off. I remember at the beginning, Gibby was like, “What’s the structure? How are you going to do it?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, we got to shoot it and then figure it out.” Because you can’t really go into it with a solid idea. It’s a documentary. You got to let the material kind of dictate it. And to my satisfaction, that worked. We just kept shooting and finding the most compelling story elements from the interviews and we figured it out as we went along. The good part about this band is they were such an art experiment that incorporated all different kinds of media, and shocking and inappropriate juxtapositions between different kinds of media and images and sound, so that gave me license to apply that style and aesthetic to the film. I think that turned out to be a big advantage. So we could use puppetry and animation, different styles of animation, archival, interview, and make it feel right for the band.
3. The Hole Truth weaves together archival footage, dozens of interviews, animation, and puppets extensively. How did you even start with all of this?
Tom: I knew I didn’t want to have a boring talking-heads-style documentary. I didn’t know everything about how the film would happen, but I knew right from the beginning that it had to be visually entertaining because these guys are visual artists as well as musicians. So I just tried to bring all my tricks to the table, all my skills as a filmmaker, and I’ve worked a lot with puppets. I love puppets. I’ve worked in animation as well. So those are two great ways to create imagery when you’re reenacting stuff that you don’t necessarily have footage for. I have great friends who are expert puppeteers and puppet designers. This guy, Drew Massey, did design the puppets and they, you know, they turned out great. The quality of the puppets is pretty special. And I got a great animator named Andrew Reff, who was a huge Butthole Surfers fan. When you do a documentary about a band like the Butthole Surfers, who have a lot of artist fans, you end up being able to tap into some great talent. Andrew heard we were doing a film about the Butthole Surfers and he reached out to me. So his stuff was great.
4. Paul, did you gain a new appreciation or perspective on the band through this process?
Paul: I was a little humbled and surprised to see so many big-name people willing to talk about the band. I learned a few things too. I didn’t know about Gibby’s traumatic childhood experience until I watched the movie, and then things started making a lot more sense for me. It’s kind of hard for me to talk about—that’s really Gibby’s story to tell. But I was surprised that he told it. I thought that was really brave of him to do that. I’m kind of surprised because his normal reaction to questions is to kind of flip things on its head and make light of everything, but Tom was very persistent.
Tom: Early on we showed a rough cut of the movie to people and they gave us feedback. What came out of that was it didn’t have that stuff with Gibby and Bob. Everybody was like, “Everybody talks about Gibby except Gibby. Gibby doesn’t really confront the difficult parts of his own story.” And so, to Gibby’s credit, even though he is a challenge as an interview, he doesn’t dodge questions. He doesn’t give you straight answers, but I was persistent. I interviewed Gibby like 20 times, and my one strategy was just keep doing it until I get the goods. But after I told Gibby that what’s missing is you talking about this difficult stuff, to his credit he got that because as hard as it is for him to talk about that stuff, he has a sense of the big picture and he wanted the movie to be good. So he rose to the occasion and just went there. But also I pitched him, let’s bring Bob, because they have a very close friendship. Bob’s a professional drug counselor, and I thought that could work to get Gibby to open up and be a little more emotionally vulnerable. And it worked. That was exactly what the movie needed. I’ve been very pleased with audience reactions. There’s a lot of laughs in the first half of the movie, and then there’s real tears in the second half.
5. One of the documentary’s motifs is the band’s unreliable oral history, hilariously shown when someone tells a story, then immediately cuts to another band member either saying it didn’t happen or having a wildly different memory. Can you talk more about what the interview process was like and how you shaped the narrative with so many, often contradictory, voices?
Tom: Well, first of all, human memory is totally unreliable, especially when you’re talking about stuff that happened 30 or 40 years ago. We were all younger and not necessarily sober. So the best you can do is just hear it from multiple sources and let the audience decide. There’s no way to totally verify stuff. There’s a big laugh when Paul describes the genesis of the song “Lady Sniff”, a Butthole Surfers classic that was a hit on college radio back in the day. Paul has a very good recall of the moment of inspiration for the phrase “lady sniff” and he tells it. Then we cut to Gibby saying, remember that? And he’s like, No. Yeah. And that’s a great, great moment because, you know, Gibby doesn’t remember a lot of stuff.
Paul: My favorite was when we’re talking about co-writing a song with Kid Rock. I told a story about that and it then goes to Gibby and he’s like.
Tom: “I never worked with Kid Rock.” I think he genuinely wrote it out of his own brain, because he just seemed like he was being sincere. But I mean, it happened. He knows it happened.
6. Was there anyone out there you tried to get and couldn’t or anyone that ended up on the cutting room floor that you couldn’t?
Tom: Corey Rusk. Just couldn’t get him. You’re from Chicago—the Chicago part of the story is Touch and Go Records. He just wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t talk to us. I reached out again and again. I wanted to let him present his side of the story, but he just doesn’t want to talk. But lots of people ended up on the cutting-room floor, unfortunately. I interviewed like 150 people for this, so there just wasn’t room for them. A lot of people were disappointed that they’re only in it for like 5 seconds after a long interview, but that’s the nature of the beast. That means we’ll have a great DVD release because there’s going to be a lot of extra stuff. I did a cut of my favorite interview parts and like 90% of that is not in the movie. I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head that we really wanted and couldn’t get. Because I didn’t want to do the kind of doc where it’s just a bunch of people talking about the band that weren’t there. Maybe one or two of those, like Eric Andre, who’s a great contemporary comedian who’s just hugely influenced by the band. He said he feels like he plagiarized the band because he was so influenced by their transgressive impulses. I wanted to hear from a couple of people who are next generation or current generation, to show the legacy of the band and also to give younger people a way in. But mostly it’s all people who were there and directly involved.
7. Paul, were there any interviews or anything anyone said outside the band that really stuck out to you either good or bad?
Paul: Not really. I kind of knew what people were going to say, although Eric Andre really surprised the hell out of me because that guy’s funny as hell and somebody that I like and respect, so to hear that we had some kind of influence on him just kind of blew me away. I hope I get to meet that guy someday. It also struck me how many people are in the movie that are no longer on this earth. And it’s kind of sad, but I guess that happens when you’re dealing with older people and you spend five years making a movie, things happen.
Tom: Yes. Gibby says there’s a curse on the movie. We lost Gary Floyd, Teresa Taylor, Steve Albini, Frank Kozik, and a couple others. And then there was a horrible coda with Rob Reiner. I don’t know if you know that story, but this was the last movie he ever saw. One of our producers, Derrick Rossi, was friends with Rob and sent him a link to the movie. And he got a voicemail after those murders. Rob and Michelle had just watched the movie and loved it, and were telling Derrick how great it was. Rob said it was one of the best music docs ever. That was five o’clock on Saturday. They went from there to Conan O’Brien’s party. So it was almost certainly the last movie they ever watched, which is heartbreaking. It’s absolutely horrible. But it’s also the mix of emotions of like, what an honor for this directing legend to love the movie. But the context was so hideous. I couldn’t sleep for days when I heard that voicemail.
8. You mentioned a curse—you can tell how many people were touched by being a part of this band, directly or indirectly, even while going through difficult times. Like the interviews with Teresa show how much she enjoyed her time in the group and how there was a lot of beauty along with the dark times. What do you remember about her involvement with the movie?
Tom: Teresa is such a great character. People love her. I’m very glad she lived long enough to do a couple of interviews. But when you talk about interviews you didn’t get, I wanted to interview her more. When we shot that first interview with her, we shot for a couple of hours and I was like, “Great, we’ll keep doing this.” But she got real sick and I didn’t get nearly as much as I wanted to get out of her. And then the second time I interviewed her, she was very sick. You can see it in the footage. So that was a whole different vibe. But just with the first interview, she had such a spirit about her that comes through. A lot of people comment on just how much they love Teresa. She really was a incredible person.
“I’ve been very pleased with audience reactions. There’s a lot of laughs in the first half of the movie, and then there’s real tears in the second half.”
9. There’s a period where you all kind of go your separate ways. Gibby’s becoming a dad. Paul, you’re a producer, you get married, you’re walking the cat around. King’s husband dies. And then you’re all back together again in the studio. How did you all decide you’re going to come back and do this again?
Paul: It was because of the documentary. And I’m really happy for it, because it was fun to get together with my bandmates in the studio and to do a Donovan song. We’ve been influenced by Donovan for a long time, and we already recorded one of his songs, so to get together and do another one was just a lot of fun, and I’m very happy with the way that song came out. So that was that was a fun memory for me.
Tom: Yeah, I mean, that was a bit of the documentarian wanting an ending, and it just seemed like a natural thing to do. It did seem like it was more possible just because we’d all been talking and it was fresh in everybody’s mind, the story of the band. So it just seemed natural at that point to like, hey, you know, why don’t you guys get just get back in a studio, do something. And everybody was into it. So it made sense. It was natural. We didn’t have to force it. It was something that was ready to happen and was a lot of fun, you know, to hang out in the studio with the band and everybody had fun. And it was emotional too, because King set up Teresa’s old drum kit and he played two tracks of drums, one like how he would play and one how she would play, to try to recapture that two-drummer thing.
Paul: The thing that made it especially fun for me was the previous the last time we’d been in the studio was when we had to get together and re-record a bunch of stuff for Weird Revolution, which was the bastardization of After the Astronaut. And that was such a miserable experience. We’re not calling the shots and we don’t want to be there. I hated that being my last memory of working in the studio with my band. So to have this happen really meant a lot to me, as now I have this happy final memory of being in the studio with my bandmates.
10. In the past year, the Surfers played their first live show in years, had a Stranger Things “Kate Bush moment,” and announced the release of the “lost” album After the Astronaut. What’s next for the Butthole Surfers?
Paul: I don’t think there’s anything next other than the documentary. We got to play together for three songs in a Hollywood screening of the movie at the, again, at the Egyptian Theater. And that was a whole lot of fun because three songs is something that I can handle in my old age. Playing a live show is a very physical thing to do. I ride a bicycle a lot, but I don’t play guitar anymore, so for me to play an hour and a half show would just require a ton of work and I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go on tour. I’ve done it. Everything about playing live I’ve accomplished in my mind. The only reason to do it would be for the money. And that’s a terrible reason to do something.
11. I have a friend from Garland, Texas, outside of Dallas, who is a big fan and was wondering why the Buttholes, Scratch Acid, Stickmen with Ray Guns, and all these other noisy, strange bands emerged in Texas around the same time. What is it about Texas that breeds music like that?
Paul: Well, there was the East Coast and there was the West Coast, and then Texas was neither one. But there’s a lot of people in Texas and there’s some big cities, so nobody in Texas really felt like they had to conform to some standard of brash punk or whatever. We had our own influences that included everything from Freddie King and the Blues to Rocky Erickson and Willie Nelson and all that. So we kind of got our own thing going. I don’t know how to describe it other than we’re just a little different down here.
12. During the classic era, Paul, you were balancing absurdist performance art and chaos with an intense work ethic. How did you all keep it together and not wind up like G.G. Allin?
Paul: We had to keep it together because one of the things we did early on was burn our bridges and we were constantly burned our bridges. And so there was no turning around and going back home to our job at wherever it was. It was either stick it out or starve to death, and we were hungry. We needed it.
Tom: It reminds me of something Jeff Pinkus said, which I think is true, which is that Gibby was kind of the band’s manager. He was doing all the booking in those early days, and it made him the responsible party. When the major label years happened, he didn’t have to do that anymore. And somehow, by offloading the responsibility, it sort of let him get into trouble, because when you don’t have to be in charge, you’re free to pursue less responsible avenues, which could lead to trouble. And it did.
Paul: You’re talking about being responsible for managing the band in the days before cell phones. And there’s no way to adequately describe what it was like being on the road for year after year with a basket of maps and a bag full of quarters and pulling into a town not knowing where your show was and going to find a payphone. I mean, my God, I just I don’t know how he did that.
+1. What’s your question for us?
Tom: What’s your earliest memory in life? I asked everybody that question.
James: That’s a good one. I was sitting on my dad’s lap on the riding lawnmower, which my mother said didn’t happen, but I have a distinct memory of that.
Paul: How would you react if it became a proven fact that the moon is a UFO? It is an alien entity that came from somewhere else, but it’s not really proven or accepted that it’s proven, but I’m convinced and most people won’t acknowledge it.
James: You know, I’ve always been super into aliens, so I think I would be into it. I’m not a very religious person, but maybe if I was, then it’d probably be like the end of my life or something. I think a lot of people wouldn’t be able to deal with that. But I feel like that’d be pretty cool.